


Than Serve In Heaven

by LizzieSiddal



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Ben Solo Runs Away From His Own Feelings, Big Scary Overlord Holds Hands With Girl, Character Study, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Visions, I Love One Tragic Space Dictator, Intergalactic Sleepovers With Your Sworn Enemy, Missing Scene, Skywalker Family Drama, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21892372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzieSiddal/pseuds/LizzieSiddal
Summary: Kylo Ren resists temptation.(takes place between Episode VIII and Episode IX, minor spoilers for TROS)
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35





	Than Serve In Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> The following takes place between TLJ and TROS and teases what could have been (sigh) but mostly indulges in the kind of Force shenanigans I wish JJ had used – you know, the ones used to create further intimacy and character development rather than deliver exposition? (Me? Bitter? Never.) I am not touching the issue of Rey's origins at all because a) he wouldn’t be aware of it at this point in the story and also b) I fucking hate it so there. 
> 
> Title is from John Milton's Paradise Lost because yes, I am that pretentious.

It starts the same way every time: he floats, in a comfortable sort of emptiness, cradled in the comfort of the dark. There he is warm and safe and, for a moment, nothing can harm him. But soon enough, this too turns sour: then the murky black waters reject him, and an unseen, terrifying current seems to propel him, until he is falling upwards into a blinding void that beckons him. His body braces for impact as the surface rushes closer and closer. Inevitable. Inescapable.

He jerks awake.

His eyes open on the ceiling, a dull metallic grey he knows well. It’s dark and quiet. There is no need to gasp for air: _he is fine_. He is in his chambers, in the same plain officer quarters he has occupied for years. He concentrates on the mechanical hum of the life support systems, mentally reaches for the predictable, reassuring rhythms of the ship, _his_ ship, pulsing in the cold depths of space. If his heart pounds too fast, if his skin prickles with awareness, it does not matter. _Breathe._ _Focus on where you are. Ground yourself_.

“You talk in your sleep. Did you know that?”

He stares ahead, unblinking, and wills his heartbeat into submission.

A long suffering sigh comes from somewhere to his left. “Look, it’s been a long day, and I’d like to get some rest without you trashing in your sleep. Do you mind?”

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, infamous Jedi Killer and scourge of the galaxy, is not used to being spoken to in this manner. Certainly not like this, while he lies tangled in his blankets, rumpled and breathless in his pyjamas.

He doesn’t need to move to know what he will find if he cranes his neck in the direction of the intruder’s voice. Across his too narrow bed, which now improbably stretches across the vastness of space, Rey from Nowhere lies, in her own cot in some forgotten rebel base thousands of worlds away. He sets his jaw, braces himself, and twists towards her voice.

Even though he knows precisely what he is going to find, the surprise at seeing her _right there_ still gives him pause. She is barely a breath away, face, neck and the curve of one shoulder rising awkwardly from a shabby woollen blanket. She has a strand of hair stuck to her forehead and an indignant flush high on her cheeks.

It’s hardly the first time this has happened to them. Last time, she glared at him disapprovingly, told him that he snored louder than a wookie, and turned her back on him in a huff. The time before that, he’d woken to the persistent, baffling sensation that someone was tugging on the blankets of his bed, only to find himself alone in the room.

The Force must be taunting him for his weakness. There’s no other explanation. She could have been here, for real, if she had said yes, if the future he had hoped for them had come true. Instead, they are locked in this pantomime of intimacy, pushed together when their walls come down at night. He knows Rey would rather be elsewhere, in whatever grimy hell-hole she is hiding in with the thieves and traitors she calls friends. Anywhere else but here, stuck with him.

“I am awake now,” he rasps out, voice low and thick with sleep.

She huffs. “Yes. That makes two of us.” This close, he doesn’t need to dig into her head to hear her thoughts. She stares back into his eyes defiantly, and he seems to hear her words in his own head before her lips part, before she draws breath, before she disrupts the uneasy quiet between them.

“What do you dream about, anyway?”

How can she not know? He knows what _she_ dreams about. He has walked in those dreams, down the echoing corridors of those old cavernous ruins gathering dust under the desert sun. He’s seen her slender fingers brush lovingly across a forgotten pilot’s helmet, tangle in a mess of wires and emerge victorious, and felt the heat in the air, the texture of sand against his own skin, as if the small calloused hand was his own. He has learnt how going to sleep on an empty stomach and a parched throat feels like, when you are only six and desperately alone.

Did she never see his own dreams, truly, in those glimpses she has had of the inside of his head? She could pry her way in if she wanted. I’d be easy for her, even if he were to resist.

(Would he resist?)

“Are you ever going to answer?”

He sighs. “No. Go to sleep.”

What he would do wouldn’t matter in the end: she could take what she wanted if she only reached out for it. She is strong and fierce, more than she even dares contemplate. He has felt the Force thrumming like a live wire between them, and he knows darkness burns inside her much like light still stubbornly clings to him. She is dazzling now, and she is still unpolished, unfinished – she is yet to grow into her powers, and there’s so much more she could still be. He can see her so clearly: her eyes glinting like steel, black swirling around her, death and destruction at her fingertips, entire worlds trembling under her heel. Together they would be unstoppable, untouchable – the galaxy would bow to them, would live in fear and adoration of her. He has tried to show her what they could be, together, and every time she has turned her back on him. She has claimed to be revolted, insulted, but he knows better: the boy he used to be, a lifetime ago, clung to doubt and self-denial too, as if his life depended on it.

Kylo is not a patient man, but he can try, for her. One day she will discover this truth he eventually learnt himself: it is foolish to resist the dark. There’s a comfort and a clarity in accepting the inevitability of pain, and using it to propel you forward, rather than drag you back.

There’s other dreams. Nightmares. _Memories_ would be more like it, for they feel familiar, lived in. Memories of things, not as they were, perhaps, but twisted into horrid, grotesque shapes. He thought these images truths for so long, it was easy to miss the imprint of Snoke’s cruel fingers in them. So many times he has gone back to Han Solo’s face, pinched in disgust and disappointment, lips pressed tight in a grimace, nose too long and hooked, as if all of Kylo’s own ugliness was superimposed on the man’s good looks.

 _(he will grow dashing like his papa_ , some had said when he was young. But then he’d grown lanky and sullen and awkward, and around thirteen the comments had finally stopped)

Only he can no longer recall if Han Solo ever beheld his son in such contempt. Perhaps he did not. It matters little when it can take him hours upon waking for doubt to creep in, for an echo of the man’s laugh to reach him, to remember that once, in some precious moments he painstakingly locked inside himself, away from Snoke’s prying eyes, his father must have —improbably— loved him. Despite everything.

Ben Solo was loved, once.

More often than not, sleep eludes him, which all in all may be preferable to ghostly visitations and unnerving nightmares. His body is exhausted after the gruesome training regime he puts it through, and he lies on the mattress sluggishly, which is close enough to sleep, he finds, to qualify as some sort of rest. His awareness of Rey flickers in and out of his consciousness, like the ghostly twitching of a missing limb. It’s warm inside his room, as he prefers it, yet goose bumps break out across his skin – _someone’s_ skin, perhaps it is Rey who is cold; the moment when their perceptions briefly overlap is disconcerting and leaves him shaken every time.

She is awake too. When he sits up in his bed, he finds her sitting on the floor in the middle of his room, legs crossed and back perfectly straight, her small hands resting on her knees. She stays like this stubbornly, as if he couldn’t see her concentration has faltered. She frowns and her nose twitches, but her eyes stay closed. She basically treats him as little more than a fly buzzing close to her ear, yet he can’t help but revel in her presence, for all he despises himself for it.

“You have continued your training,” he says.

Rey’s eyes remain close. Others might think it a show of trust, but not him: he can see how tense she is, ready to sprint out of his grasp once again.

“Must you state the obvious every time?” she snaps. He does enjoy fanning the fires of her irritation so. She burns much more brightly when furious.

“You rid yourself of one useless teacher and rush to find another.” It’s a low blow, perhaps, but it has been a long day, and he is tired of her constant rejection.

She doesn’t quite react as he expects. She opens her eyes slowly, and inspects him with a knowing, unnerving gaze.

“Can you see us, through the bond? When I am with her?” her voice is soft, a cruel mimicry of compassion he doesn’t want from her. This is a line of questioning he cannot endure.

What could he possibly tell her? He cannot see his mother through the bond. He cannot even picture his mother’s face when he tries, which is absurd, because his father’s face seems to haunt him at every turn. But his mother-

He is of course familiar with General Organa’s stern, lined face: she is one of the First Order’s most wanted, their most viciously hated enemy after all, and frequently featured in that absurd propaganda theatre his officers favour. But his mother as she was, when he was young, when he was still Ben Solo? It’s harder to recall her face as it used to be. He recalls her smell and her warmth, the way the Light in her burned bright and clear as if they parted only yesterday, but when a memory of his mother comes to him, it’s with her back to him every time. _The princess is busy at the moment, Master Ben. You will have to wait._ Senator Organa will see you shortly. _Your mother has a lot on her plate, kiddo._

Trust Leia Organa to be always looking out for something better, some one more deserving of her attention. It was what he remembered best: his mother staring resolutely ahead, and the line of her back, her proud regal bearing, not yet showing strain.

He refuses to think of his mother softly. He won’t think of the sorrows he has left for her to shoulder alone. He doesn’t want to feel the light in her reaching out for him across the stars, and so he nurses his bitterness with renewed purpose, takes out each grievance against her and sharpens the blade of his resentment with morbid deliberation: _I needed her and she was not there. I loved her and yet she pushed me away. I trusted her and she kept the truth of our lineage from me._

Can’t Rey see she makes herself weaker by pursuing such attachments? Why try so hard to be what _they_ want, when she could be something much better instead? He tries, again, to make her understand: “She fears your power, your potential for greatness, like she feared mine. You have nothing to learn from her.”

Rey rises from the floor slowly, all slender, graceful limbs and a determined slant to her mouth. Whatever he was going to say next dies in his throat when she walks towards the bed, perching carefully on the edge. She would only need to reach out and they’d be touching again. He holds his breath.

“I could show you,” she says. She phrases it like a friendly favour exchanged between peers, as if it meant nothing, but he knows better. This is the price he is to pay for intimacy with her: he has to bare every open bleeding wound for her inspection.

He clenches his fists and tries to keep himself in check. _Breathe, Ben_ , and this is not the time to hear Luke Skywalker’s voice but no one else ever taught him to control his impulses, so that’s the voice he is stuck with now.

She stares at him, face carefully blank, and he tries not to focus on her stillness, her closeness, the way her chest starts rising and falling more rapidly to match his own laboured breathing.

He nods. He hates himself for it, but he nods all the same.

She slowly, carefully raises a hand to his temple. It does not quite touch him, but it comes close, too close. Her eyes are wide open as her consciousness rises to meet his, prods the edges of mind, shrewd and determined.

 _Don’t fight this_ , the command is spoken directly into his mind. It isn’t the first time another will forces his way inside his head, and he braces for the invasion, for her to disarm him and steal every secret shame from his heart. But his little scavenger knows precisely how to go about it, and she does it with a light but sure touch –she has admirable control, truly, it took him ages to learn how to do this and he wreaked havoc on his way in everytime. Rey keeps her word and doesn’t pry.

He tells himself it’s anger he feels, when the soft hum of his mother’s voice reaches him and he is hit with the overpowering current of Rey´s gratitude, her warmth, her uncomplicated affection. His mother’s face glows in the soft light of the afternoon, infused with the Force, so bright around her. Her features are softer than he remembers. She is small. It’s unsettling. How could a woman who loomed so tall in his mind take up so little space? He fixates on the wrinkles around her mouth, her frown lines, wondering when, exactly, she got so old. He can barely recognise her, only her signature in the Force is the same, and her dark eyes are the same only much sadder. There’s love, so much of it, and hope -empty promises, he knows, but he feels oddly vulnerable to them, their siren call threatening to drag him along.

He braces himself against the onslaught and recoils from Rey’s mind, tears his consciousness away from hers viciously, as fast as he possibly can. He snaps back to reality at once, and Rey’s wrist is trapped in his grip before he knows what he is doing. She gasps, and he burns with shame, feeling more of a graceless brute than ever. He ought to let go of her immediately but a flash of something flares up at their physical contact and he can’t, he has to see-

 _The island is green and ancient. The waves crash against the shore and the sun shines down on them both and here at last there’s a peace that is theirs, even as the voices of a thousand generations echo around them. They have his mother’s and his uncle’s lightsabers between them, surrounded by the oldest texts Ben’s ever seen, the one he is certain Luke hid away from his pupils’ eyes. There are centuries of ancient lore on those pages and the promise of a better, brighter future, a legacy that feels like a privilege rather than a burden. Their hands brush together with easy intimacy and the earth does not shake when they touch, the world does not end. He is content, he is_ happy _, he is empty of suffering and strife as he is one with her and with the Ligh-_

He lets go of her wrist as if she’s burned him.

“Was that what you saw?” the question bursts out of him, his voice about to crack. “Was that what you saw when we first touched?”

She seems as stunned as he is. She shakes her head. “No. I’ve never seen that.”

Why would the Force show him this? He has tried so desperately to be strong, to honour the great Destiny his grandfather laid for him, to break away from the prison of the Jedi’s teachings, who only taught him to fear his own power. Is this yet another test he must overcome?

“Ben,” she starts. “Ben, it’s alright.”

He should not have touched her. He should not have submitted to this, whatever it was. She will either come to him, as she ought to, on _his_ terms, or they will not touch at all. This was clearly a mistake. 

“There’s peace, for you,” she whispers urgently, and something inside him breaks loose. “The Dark Side has brought you only pain. There’s another path, for you. For _us_. Your mother loves you and I know- whatever you feel-“

Anger. Anger is what he feels. Terrible, boiling, seething rage that blinds him, that burns like bile at the back of his throat. Rage that threatens to spill out of him and shakes him to his core. There is no space in him for anything else.

He can’t see Rey well at all, because his vision keeps blurring. Yet he can hear the pity in her voice well enough and it is worse, much worse than her contempt and he longs to hide from it, but he has no armour, no mask, no line of defence against this. When their connection is cut short like a door slamming shut it comes as a relief. He shudders violently, sick to his stomach, his chest hurting as if she’d cleaved him open, gutted him with the weapon that should be his, and the lights flicker around him like they would when he was young and overwhelmed.

 _Breathe. Breathe. You are safe. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. You can control this._ His rage, his pain, have been reliable constant companions, and he is all too used to their sting.

Theoretically, a bond like theirs leaves little room for privacy. Still, this is the kind of dream he hopes she never gets to see.

He is in Han Solo’s blasted ship of all places and he is not alone.

Rey is right in front of him, hair loose around her shoulders, comfortably perched on a man’s lap in an eerie, disturbing imitation of the way his parents would sit on the rare occasions Han Solo managed to get the Princess of Alderaan into the disreputable piece of garbage he called home. Jealousy rises in him, fierce and unbidden: is this what she does with those criminals she favours? Is there another-

And then Rey twists and he sees the man is in fact – impossibly- himself.

He stares at this stranger who wears his face, cloaked in rough-spun simple clothing rather than heavy Imperial robes, whose large, inelegant paws are circling her waist as if this was something he was somehow entitled to.

“What happened to whatever I want, wherever I want?” she is saying teasingly and he can barely recognise her. He has never heard her so light and sweet.

“Within limits, sweetheart,” this other man who cannot be him says.

“Anything, you said,” she insists, and he smiles ruefully, as if this was a game they play every time, a game he is always happy to let her win.

He should be disgusted with himself at how easily he bends for her, desperate to take any scrap of affection she’d willingly give him. He watches himself made docile under her small frame, a rabid beast turned faithful lap dog; all in the hope he will get to press his mouth to her sweet lips.

Would he truly debase himself in this manner?

“What would you like then?” the man that is not Kylo Ren asks.

She laughs. It’s the loveliest sound, even as it mocks him. “A kiss?”

Once, a lifetime ago, he offered this woman the galaxy. He thought he knew her, after seeing with such perfect clarity the secret pains and longings of her heart. His lonely desert rat is a greedy sort of creature: in this, at least, they are exactly alike. He has felt both their hearts burn with the same desperate hunger. That _this_ should be enough for her —not power, not vengeance, not the freedom to remake the world into something that would never hurt her, but a mere kiss from an undeserving man— seems like the cruellest sort of joke.

The other Ben leans his head back for her, eyes closed and throat bare. He half expects her to draw blood when she traces a finger there, across the skin of his cheek and neck, right where she once branded him, but she smiles and curls her hand across his jawline and bows her head down to meet his.

For a moment he fancies he can feel it, the aching sweetness of it, the easy, practiced show of affection, her warm, moist breath and the little hungry gasp she makes against his mouth. Until he -blasted fool that he is- opens his eyes, and the vision dissolves, and he finds himself alone in his bed again.

Here is some of what she would see, if he let her (but he won’t, _he won’t_ , he knows he never will):

He is six years old and terrified, because he has understood with horrifying clarity that his parents, who are supposed to keep him safe, are instead afraid of him. His little chest is heaving with desperate sobs he cannot control and he is alone, alone completely, alone but for the voice who keeps him company, who tells him he is special, who assures him he doesn’t need them.

He is eight years old and flying the Falcon, and his father and Chewie are laughing and it’s the most freedom he will ever feel in his whole life. His father will not leave him: they will fly away and have adventures, and he will be normal, the son Han Solo has always wanted, and he will not make things explode when he is mad or make his mother cry.

He is twelve years old and his uncle keeps telling him “Patience, Ben, breathe,” and he has no patience, he just wants this all to stop, but he doesn’t know how and the walls threaten to close in on him and all he wants is to stop feeling helpless and to please him, because Uncle Luke at least doesn’t look at him like a bomb about to go off.

He is twenty-three and Darth Vader’s voice rumbles in his ears, promises him greatness and purpose and the power to shape the world to his will. He is twenty-five and there is so much power flowing through him, so much rage he can use, depths and depths of it. The darkness in his heart gorges on it and exhilaration burns through him, consuming everything in its path until it leaves him hollow and exhausted. His hands hold such tremendous power, and yet they tremble sometimes, no matter how often and how fervently he vows his allegiance to Snoke, to his grandfather and to his own great dark destiny. His master calls him weak, weak and unworthy, and he is ashamed at the truth of those words. A monster, she calls him, and that’s all he longs to be, because monsters don’t feel anything but thirst for violence and that at least can be easily sated. He is twenty-eight, thirty, a thousand years old it feels sometimes, and he’s broken his own heart and left it bleeding as an offering at the altar he prays to every night, yet there is no relief: his father keeps falling every time he closes his eyes. He sits on a crimson throne, fearsome and terrible, vowing death and destruction to anyone who’d dare defy him and it gives him no satisfaction. It all means nothing, nothing at all and the safety that was promised to him never comes.


End file.
